President Obama just called for increased spending on infrasture, speficially saying he’d move to make necessary repairs on the scores of under-maintained bridges throughout the country. He also called to make pre-school available to every child in America: “Every dollar we invest in early childhood education can save seven dollars later on, …Let’s do what works, and make sure none of our kids start the race of life already behind.”
» It’s all about infrastructure: AT&T is trying hard to play catch-up with Verizon, which not only has more customers and bandwidth, but also now has the iPhone. The bummer for T-Mobile users is that AT&T’s monthly rates are far higher than T-Mobile’s, which as you might guess has people worried. While T-Mobile has tried to get ahead of talk like this, the concerns are enough that many analysts are warning that the deal won’t go through.
» Sleeping through the wake-up calls: Creaky gas lines leading to violent, deadly explosions have been more common than we’d like lately. You may recall last year’s colossal blast in San Bruno, California, for example, which killed eight people and raised a lot of concern over the state of gas lines nationwide. 2010 was a bad year for gas explosions, as this list attests, and it begs asking whether the U.S. government is shirking their responsibilities on infrastructure safety. In a world in which we’re constantly reminded and warned about very grand-scale, existential threats like global terrorism and the blight of nuclear weapons, the possibility that the ground is going to suddenly explode underneath us seems to get short shrift. With the Obama administration appearing to cede to a Republican-ish center on fiscal matters, odds are the concerted focus and infrastructure spending needed to answer these questions simply won’t be there. Which sucks, frankly.
» Our big quibble? If you’re going to make a big deal about switching the infrastructure of the Internet, why do it on that day when there’s an obvious date with instant branding possibilities? If they had done this on April 6 instead of June 8, it would be way easier to promote. But let’s face it. Nerds don’t think about stupid things like promotion. (By the way, go here if you wanna test your readiness.)
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